Musings of The Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
Index to a series of Flyer Tips posts.
1- seat maps
2 – basics of airline revenue management
3 – booking classes
4 – availability tools
5 – booking class availability myths
6 – keeping informed of schedule changes
Seat preferences
flying alone
flying as a couple
flying with 2 others
flying with 3 others
Keep watching for more to come.
I recently posted about a ticket where all 16 flights have been changed. It is best if you find out as soon as possible when significant schedule changes to any of your bookings occur. Significant here means has a consequential impact – which could be missing an onward flight, requiring a change in flights/route, missing a night of already paid for accommodation or requiring an extra night, missing a cruise, etc.
The reason is because by being informed as early as possible you maximise your options. More on this later.
How to keep informed
There are a number of things you can easily do to keep up to date.
Twice a year schedule disruption
Major airlines and major airports coordinate schedules in 2 six-month periods – Northern Summer from April to September and Northern Winter from October to March. Conveniently the start and end of each “season” loosely coincides with the start and end of daylight savings in the countries which have daylight savings time in their summer. The non-alignment of daylight savings dates and travel between northern and southern hemispheres means there are some scheduling issues for most international airlines around those dates.
Anyway, when most of the schedules for the next season are worked out, well in advance of course, it is common for airline systems, websites, etc to take several days to adjust all the impacted flights and bookings.
This means you need to be careful not to assume a schedule change has created a problem. For example it may be the first flight has been retimed in your booking but the second has not yet but will do so to restore the connection.
The ticket I referred to above, with 16 flights changing, is a good example of ongoing changes. It is also an example of a ticket for travel in a subsequent season being bought before the new season’s schedule was updated.
What to do about schedule changes?
How to deal with schedule changes is a big topic in itself, so I’ll follow up in a later post.
This is part of a series of blog posts on tips for flyers.
Why might this post be useful to you?
Previous posts in this series explained what are booking classes, and how you can use tools to look up their availability. This post helps you to interpret booking class availability by explaining away some myths and fallacies.
Fallacy – add up available numbers
An easy mistake to make is to add up the availability in a class of travel based on the availability of individual booking classes.
For example a flight may show the availability in business class as J4 D3 I0 – this does not mean 7 business class seats are available. It means the airline is willing to sell 4 seats (at least) in full fare business class, 3 in discounted business class and none in sale fare business class. I say at least 4 seats in full fare because this particular airline only shows a maximum of 4 in availability tools for first and business class. However, in this case it is probably 4 or 5, rather than a higher number, because the airline is not willing to sell many discounted fares.
Myth – from the availability numbers I can tell how full the cabin is
While low availability does suggest a full cabin this is not always so, for several reasons.
An example is a flight with 12 seats in business class. If availability shows J2 D0 I0 then it is intuitive to think 2 seats are available for sell means 10 seats have been taken – the cabin is fairly full.
The first reason this might not be right is that it ignores oversell situations. Airlines sometimes sell more seats than are physically available because they know a percentage of passengers fail to take the flight (called no show). If say more than 5% of passengers are expected to no show for a given flight, then they can make more money by selling say 2% extra seats. The extra revenue from the 2% more than offsets any costs if there are fewer no shows than expected. The no show rate varies a lot by route, class of travel, day of week, time of day, number of full fare/flexible tickets sold. Airlines monitor no show rates quite carefully and have models to predict the numbers.
The second reason is the schedule may give the airline flexibility to oversell, or to undersell, a flight. If a flight has a light load and there is another flight by the same airline a little earlier or later they might combine them. If the airline is planning for this event they may undersell close to departure to allow the 2 flights to be merged. Qantas is well known for doing this on their golden triangle route between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Similarly if there are two (or more) flights with varying loads they may oversell more aggressively one flight knowing they can switch some passengers to the other flight. British Airways and Qantas sometimes do this on the Kangaroo route between London and Sydney.
A third reason is allowing for the ability to move some passengers into a different cabin (usually higher cabin in an op-up or operational upgrade because a downgrade needs to be compensated for). If the first class cabin is fairly empty then an airline may allow business class to be oversold, similarly for empty business class and full economy class. Interpreting availability for business class and premium economy can be particularly tricky as you need to look at the cabin above and the cabin below since there may be cascading op-ups. This is where some passengers are moved from business to first to make room for other passengers being moved from economy to business, on a flight where economy is oversold and business class moderately full but first class is fairly empty. A number of airlines are taking this approach more this year than previously as it is proving to be much easier to get high loads in economy than maintaining them in first or business class.
See also below about the effect of codeshares on availability.
Fallacy – once availability is gone from cheaper booking classes it does not return
Availability isn’t static or constant. It changes over time.
Availability reduces as people buy tickets. Someone buying a cheap fare reduces availability in that booking class. Someone buying a more expensive fare may reduce availability in all booking classes.
Availability may increase when people change their tickets, or the airline may decide not to release the seat back. This can produce odd results such as recent posts on Flyer Talk discussing saver awards on Singapore Airlines being available when standard (more expensive and thus higher booking class) ones were not available. In that case a cancelled award seat was re-released in the same booking class because it was close to departure and the flight was not full. However if the flight was full Singapore Airlines may have chosen to not add back an award seat and instead sell an expensive paid fare.
Airlines also review loads and bookings and tweak availability. Sometimes the airline’s predicted patterns of sales do not eventuate and they may need to add more cheap availability or take it out if things are going better (from the airline’s point of view) than expected.
Myth – a codeshare will show much the same availability as operating airline
It is easy to assume that availability of a given flight will be roughly the same for the operating airline as for the codeshare airline. After all, why would someone pay an expensive fare when they could get it more cheaply with a different airline on the same flight?
The reality is there is the relationship between availability of operating airline and availability of codeshare partner(s) depends a lot on the nature of the codeshare and several other circumstances.
Some codeshares are of the form of profit shares and work much how you’d expect in that availability is close or even identical. Examples of this include Lufthansa and United on their trans-atlantic flights and Qantas and British Airways on the kangaroo route. Note if the codeshare airline booking classes do not mean exactly the same thing as the booking classes of the operating airline (eg booking class E on one airline is the same as V on the other), availability tools may show an apparent difference that is not real.
Some codeshares are commitments to sell a certain number of seats on a flight. In these cases availability can differ widely between operating airline and marketing (ie codeshare) airline. Sometimes the operating airline will be cheaper (or have availability) and sometimes the marketing airline will be. A recent example was a friend looking for an AAdvantage frequent flyer award between Sydney and Auckland on Christmas Eve – the LAN flight had no availability under the Qantas code but did have availability under the LAN code. It is normally the other way around on this particular flight but because it is Christmas Eve all the Qantas award seats have long been snapped up. LAN does have many frequent flyers based in Australia or New Zealand and thus still had award seats available.
The codeshare airline may or may not have the ability to release unused seats to the operating airline, or get extra seats. Any inventory changes between the airlines may be at certain times (eg one month before departure) or it may be at any time. It depends on the (unpublished) details of their agreement.
Where there isn’t an adjustment clause the difference in availability can be enormous. I’ve been on flights between New Zealand and Japan (operated by Air New Zealand with codeshare by Japan Airlines) where almost every passenger onboard was on a ticket by the codeshare partner.
I’ve also been on flights were it is impossible to buy a seat from the operating airline for some weeks before departure until the inventory adjustment was made a week out and suddenly cheapish fares are available. In those cases the codeshare airline had not sold many seats and the operating airline went from having no seats for sale to a lot available to sell close to departure.
A more technical issue that is relevant in some circumstances is where the operating airline and codeshare airline use different CRS (see this post on CRS for an explanation and summary of which airline uses which CRS). In this case the availability showing may not be quite in sync making it possible to nab a seat when the flight is full.
This post is long enough I think, and so I’ll save some more flyer tips for another post. Happy travels.
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
This is part of a series of blog posts on tips for flyers.
Why might this post be useful to you?
Availability tools are sites which anyone can use to check booking class availability. Previous related posts in this series explained how airlines try to maximise their revenue and how booking classes control availability of air fares. This post builds on that information by showing where you can look up booking class availability. With this knowledge and the availability tools you can find ways to use cheap fares (if you know the fare rules), look for potentially full flights as well as ones where there is a chance of an upgrade.
Availability tools
There are a few places where travellers can search availability by booking class on specific flights or routes on a specific date. In this post I’ll discuss the three main ones of use to most passengers.
Seatcounter
www.seatcounter.com is a free online based booking class lookup tool. You can do up to half a dozen searches a day, with each search being for a specific route on a specific day and time of day (eg after midnight, early morning, late morning, afternoon, evening, late night). You can optionally specify up to 3 airlines or get all results.
The result is a listing of paid booking classes for each flight in alphabetical order. Award booking classes are generally not displayed. You need fairly detailed knowledge of what each booking class represents for the particular airline in order to be able to interpret.
Routes for which no simple connecting flights exist return no results.
KVS
www.kvstool.com is a subscription based software which includes several booking class lookup tools (amongst other functions). A download is required to use the tools through the site.
KVS is good for expert users as it provides different lookup tools which utilise the various different Computer Reservation Systems (CRS) used by airlines. As discussed previously, airlines use different CRS. Using the appropriate lookup tool for the native CRS of the specific airline you wish to fly will provide more accurate (up to date) and complete results than using one of the other CRSes. The site and FAQ provides guidance on which of the several lookup tools to use for many major airlines.
Thus, KVS is able to return information on some award and upgrade booking classes, as well as all paid booking classes. Results are sorted from highest cabin to lowest and from the most flexible booking class to least flexible within a class of travel. This form of display is intuitive to interpret for most people.
For expert users the ability to compare availability results using different tools can be interesting.
Expert Flyer
www.expertflyer.com is also a subscription service that includes booking class lookup and other tools but it does not require a download to use.
Expert Flyer returns similar results to KVS.
Interpreting availability results
This is the topic for another flyer tip, but here is a sneak preview.
Example results
J0 C0 D0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 O9
J, C and D are booking classes for business class on this particular airline. Being zeroed out means they have no seats available for sale at any fare (even the outrageously high full fares). The other booking classes are economy and all show at least 9 seats available for sale. The airline is welling to sell any of its fares (subject to fare rules eg advance purchase) as the flight is not too full.
However, in this case the results above are for a codeshare. The operating airline of the same flight has these results
J4 D4 I4 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V4 S9 N4 Q9 O4
(In seatcounter this would appear as B9 D4 H9 I4 J4 K9 L9 M9 N4 O4 Q9 S9 V4 Y9 – harder to interpret.)
J, D and I are booking classes for business class used by the operating airline. I4 means they are willing to sell even their cheapest business class fare. At some stage before departure the operating airline and codeshare airline may decide to rebalance availability by giving some more seats to the codeshare airline to boost revenues. For example the operating airline could change their business class availability to J4 D3 I0 and the codeshare airline to J2 C0 D0 – any extra business class seats sold would then be at high fares not heavily discounted.
The operating airline is also willing to sell even their cheapest fares in economy. There is no chance of an operational upgrade (economy is not oversold) or a bump on this flight (the flight is not full). Someone submitting a mileage upgrade has some chance of success (business class isn’t too full).
Note, the willingness to sell cheapest fares in economy by both codeshare and operating airline does not mean the flight is empty. It could be that date of the flight is imminent and neither airline expects to sell higher fares, or it could be that the ability to buy cheap fares is constrained by advance purchase and other fare requirements meaning booking class O (for example) can’t now be bought in practice for this flight.
Readers familiar with booking classes, and the eagle-eyed, may have noticed the booking classes used by the codeshare and operating airlines differ slightly. This is why the ranked order listing is so useful as it reduces the need for detailed knowledge of booking classes for every airline (as long as you know the main ones such as Y for full fare economy class).
Wrap Up
This post has covered 3 booking class availability tools and given a simple example to interpret. Later posts in the Flyer Tips series will show more how to interpret the results in order to save money. There is a lot more information on Flyer Talk, but this info is not easy to find.
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
I appreciate it has been a while since my last blog post in the Flyer Tip series (on booking classes). These posts take me much longer to prepare than my other blog entries.
It will be a little longer before my next one on availability tools, but it should be worth the wait. This particular topic is probably the single most useful one I have learned for saving on air fares.
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
This is part of a series of blog posts on tips for flyers.
Why might this post be useful to you?
Booking classes are a key tool which airlines use to manage their revenue. As airlines try to maximise their revenue, while passengers try to minimise their spending, it is useful to understand booking classes. The previous post in this Flyer Tips series introduced some basic airline revenue management concepts. This post builds on that information by explaining how booking classes control the availability of the millions of airfares that exist.
What are booking classes?
For airlines to maximise revenue they need to limit availability of their cheaper fares. They do this by way of booking classes. Every single fare has within its rules a constraint that it books into a particular booking class. Every booking class is designated by a single letter.
Booking class is not the same thing as class of travel or cabin. Every class of travel may have several booking classes associated with it. Some are for expensive, super flexible type fares. Some are for cheap fares. Some are for frequent flyer awards.
Example booking classes
Unfortunately booking class designations are not standardised across all airlines (although alliances are trying to make these more aligned within an alliance). Some common booking classes (although not universal) are:
F = first class
J or C = business class
Y = economy class
As an example, here are the booking classes for Lufthansa. They are listed in order of class of service, and then flexibility within each class of service.
F = first class full fare
A = first class discounted fare
O = first class awards and upgrades to first
C = business class full fare
D = business class discounted fare
I = business class awards and upgrades to business
R = business class industry travel (not available to general public)
Z = business class sale fare
Y = economy class full fare
B = economy class very flexible fare
M = economy class fairly flexible fare
H = economy class fairly flexible fare
X = economy class awards
Q = economy class moderately flexible fare
N = economy class industry travel (not available to general public)
V = economy class fairly inflexible fare
W = economy class fairly inflexible fare
U = economy class fairly inflexible fare
S = economy class inflexible fare
P = economy class inflexible fare
G = economy class inflexible fare
K = economy class inflexible fare
L = economy class inflexible fare
T = economy class inflexible fare
E = economy class sale fare
Not all booking classes are offered on all flights. As well as the obvious cases where no first class or business class exists, some routes may not offer some of the more heavily discounted fare classes (eg longhaul tends to have less economy booking classes than shorthaul due to more competition on shorthaul/domestic translating into a greater need for differentiation on price and terms). Codeshares often have a narrower range of fares. Some business-oriented shuttle flights may be restricted to just a few flexible booking classes.
How can booking classes be used?
The fare rules determine the booking classes, usually from the first letter of the fare basis code (a series of letters and numbers that are the “name” of the fare in the rules). For those that look at fare rules, knowledge of booking classes helps inform where in the hierarchy a fare sits and gives clues as to how likely it is or isn’t to be available.
There is a gotcha to watch out for. Airlines have their own tables of booking classes and mappings. These differ by airlines and sometimes an airline will change theirs (eg Air New Zealand added a new booking class code “A” for premium economy last year). The online travel agents and booking engines can sometimes be caught out by these differences or changes and describe a fare as being for a wrong class of travel. Eg “A” is used by many airlines to designate discounted first class and thus some websites showed the new premium economy code for Air New Zealand as first class instead of premium economy. This one was easy to spot as an error – Air New Zealand removed first class some years ago. Other similar errors may not be as easy to spot.
A later post in the series will explain availability tools and show how you can look up this information.
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
This is part of a series of blog posts on tips for flyers.
Why might this post be useful to you?
Airline revenue management is the art of applying economic theory in setting fares. It is a very complex area. For flyers who wish to save money (isn’t that all of us?) it is helpful to understand the basic concepts in order to find better prices. This post includes practical examples to illustrate the ideas.
But first a light introduction.
If airlines sold paint
Customer: Hi, how much is your paint?
Clerk: Well, sir, that all depends.
Customer: Depends on what?
Clerk: Actually, a lot of things.
Customer: How about giving me an average price?
Clerk: Wow, that’s too hard a question. The lowest price is $9 a gallon, and we have 150 different prices up to $200 a gallon.
Customer: What’s the difference in the paint?
Clerk: Oh, there isn’t any difference, it’s all the same paint.
Customer: Well, then, I’d like some of that $9 paint.
Clerk: First I need to ask you a few questions. When do you intend to use it?
Customer: I want to paint tomorrow, on my day off.
Clerk: Sir, the paint for tomorrow is $200 paint.
Customer: What? when would I have to paint in order to get $9 paint?
Clerk: That would be in three weeks, but you will also have to agree to start painting before Friday of that week and continue painting until at least Sunday
Customer: You’ve got to be kidding!
Clerk: Sir, we don’t kid around here. Of course, I’ll have to check to see if we have any of that paint available before I can sell it to you.
Customer: What do you mean check to see if you can sell it to me? You have shelves full of that stuff; I can see it right there.
Clerk: Just because you can see it doesn’t mean that we have it. It may be the same paint, but we sell only a certain number of gallons on any given weekend. Oh, and by the way, the price just went up to $12.
Customer: You mean the price went up while we were talking?
Clerk: Yes sir. You see, we change prices and rules thousands of times a day, and since you haven’t actually walked out of the store with your paint yet, we just decided to change. Unless you want the same thing to happen again, I would suggest you get on with your purchase. How many gallons do you want?
Customer: I don’t know exactly. Maybe five gallons. Maybe I should buy six gallons just to make sure I have enough.
Clerk: Oh, no sir, you can’t do that. If you buy the paint and then don’t use it, you will be liable for penalties and possible confiscation of the paint you already have.
Customer: What?
Clerk: That’s right. We can sell you enough paint to do your kitchen, bathroom, hall and north bedroom, but if you stop painting before you do the other bedroom, you will be in violation of our tariffs.
Customer: But what does it matter to you whether I use all of the paint? I already paid you for it!
Clerk: Sir, there’s no point in getting upset; that’s just the way it is. We make plans based upon the idea that you will use all of the paint, and when you don’t, it just causes us all sorts of problems.
Customer: This is crazy! I suppose something terrible will happen if I don’t keep painting until Sunday night?
Clerk: Yes sir, it will.
Customer: Well, that does it! I am going somewhere else to buy paint!
Clerk: That won’t do you any good, sir. We all have the same rules. You might as well just buy it here, while the price is now $13.50.
Thanks for flying — I mean painting — with our airline.
Perishable Capacity
Once a flight takes off any empty seats represent lost opportunity for income for the airlines. That is why you sometimes get last minute bargains – any money is better than none for an empty seat.
However, in general, fares do not become cheaper closer to departure. This is because airlines know if they did then people would always hold off buying until the last minute (same thing happens on a larger scale with deflation in the economy). Airlines need to be reasonably certain in advance that a flight will generate a minimum level of income to cover most of their costs, and in order to make decisions on whether to operate or cancel flights, aircraft orders and positioning, staffing, etc.
Highly Generalised Pattern of Fares
As no-one wants to pay more than they have to, the general pattern of fares is cheap initially and gradually rising until departure. However this pattern is interrupted by sales, and does depend on the view of airline analysts as to how many more seats they will sell and at what prices. The analysts are continually updating their predictions and airlines may raise or lower fares as a result.
These forecasts also means some specific flights and/or dates may be cheaper than others. Flying at the start and end of a holiday weekend and the fares are normally higher because there is high demand. Similarly shorthaul flights at start and end of the typicall business day are pricier than in the middle of the day or evening. Longhaul flights midweek may be cheaper than at weekends, to summer destinations cheaper in winter, and so on.
Maximise Revenue by Differentiation
Long words, but what it means is the airline tries to get the highest fare from each type of passenger.
A leisure passenger who plans their holiday a year in advance is typically price sensitive. In exchange for lower fares they need to pay well in advance, and the fares have conditions limiting flexibility. Some examples of constraints include being fully or partly non-refundable, high fees to make any changes, minimum stay and advance purchase requirements, and limited availability on flights especially closer to departure (more on this in another blog post) and direct routings.
On the other hand, a business traveller who needs to fly to a meeting arranged at the last minute is not very price sensitive. They may also be happy to pay more for some perks (such as onboard food and drink, more space to allow work or better sleep on longer flights, lounge access, availability on non-stop flights). Often they want or need flexibility (eg if the meeting end time changes they can change their flight back to suit). The fare that allows all this may cost 20 or more times the lowest fare paid on the same flights.
Airlines each create dozens of fares for every route each with different rules, availability and benefits, in order to increase their revenue.
Effect of Airline Competition
Most regular travellers know that competition brings cheaper prices. On US domestic markets an example is called “the Southwest effect”. On routes where there are lots of options fares may be low (eg many Trans-Atlantic routes) and on routes where there are few options fares are generally higher (eg between USA and Australia or between Australia and South America). This also applies to sales – when one airline has a sale their competitors often follow suit.
Competition also applies more subtly. Take this example of indirect vs direct routing. For Germany to USA, British Airways is a competitor of Lufthansa. This means their fares on this route need to be no higher than Lufthansa’s (and possibly lower to compensate for the time & hassle of transferring through London). The fares from Germany to USA may be lower, or not much more than, the fares from UK to USA even though they are for the same Trans-Atlantic flight.
Incidentally, this is why the US-EU Open Skies agreement was such a big deal. It allows airlines to compete head to head on nonstop routes which in theory allows them to sell more higher revenue fares in their home market (see also point of sale differences below).
Point of Sale Differences
Point of sale is where the fare is sold. Airlines don’t like to sell all their seats to one market (for flights between UK and US, UK to US sold in UK is one market and US to UK sold in US is another) as this leaves them vulnerable to shocks (eg due to an exchange rate fall travel by UK individuals and business drops sharply) and it also increases the odds of having empty seats (see perishable capacity above).
On some routes, especially domestic, the fares may be similar sold from each end – the fare from A to B is the same as from B to A. On other routes considerable fare differences apply.
These fare differences may be due to differing levels of demand for the particular route and airline. For example between Singapore and Australia, due to home airline bias (travellers preference to fly their home airline), Qantas is usually cheaper from Singapore but Singapore Airlines is usually cheaper from Australia.
The fare difference can also be due to differing income levels. For example between Australia and New Zealand fares are lower sold in New Zealand than sold in Australia for the exact same flights. Likewise between USA and Indonesia flights are cheaper sold in Indonesia than sold in USA.
These point of sale differences can sometimes be so big as to generate savings even if you take extra flights to the cheaper origin. Eg from Australia it can be cheaper buying a separate ticket to New Zealand in order to buy ex-New Zealand (ex means from) to Asia or Europe.
Wrap Up
This post has touched on just a few of the basic concepts of airline revenue management. There are some tips here which can be used to find better fares. Some of the later posts in the Flyer Tips series (in particular ones on booking classes and availability) will use these concepts and some additional ones to provide further ways to save more. There is a lot more information on Flyer Talk, but this info is not easy to find.
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
This is the first in a series of blog posts on tips for flyers.
Why might this post be useful to you?
Seat comfort is important, especially on long flights. A more comfortable seat can be a big help to make the flight more enjoyable.
Airlines have different seat layouts (called configurations) for different aircraft types (eg the layout for a 737 is different to the layout for a 747), and sometimes a single aircraft type can also have different layouts (eg Qantas currently have half a dozen layouts for 747 aircraft). Different airlines have different layouts (eg Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa have different layouts on 747 aircraft).
This post covers how to find the seat layout on your flight, and how to select a good seat and avoid a bad seat. It also covers some useful tools for travellers that are related to seat maps, how to use them, and some limitations.
Seat map type 1 – configuration
The first type of seat maps are those showing seating configurations. Many airline websites have seatmaps available online, although in some cases airlines have multiple seating configurations for the same aircraft type, when it can be difficult to deduce which applies for a given flight. An example is given below from British Airways.
While these may show the seat layout, they generally do not provide much information on the best and worst seats, other than by location of emergency exit rows, toilets and galleys. Some airlines show the seat pitch, but many do not.
Seat pitch is the distance between the same part of the seats but one row apart, and thus is an indication of legroom.
More useful configuration maps
There are some websites that provide much more useful information to assist travellers in selecting good seats and avoiding bad seats. Two examples are Seatguru and SeatExpert. These sites are easy to use and generally reliable, but do not cover minor airlines and may take some time to fully update for new configurations.
These sites allow you to work out which seats you want, or want to avoid, based on your own criteria (for instance some people wish to be a distance from the galley to avoid noise whereas others have a stronger preference to be as forward as possible). However, the sites do not tell you which seats are free on a particular flight or allow for factors such as whether or not you might get a row to yourself.
Seat map type 2 – available and unavailable seats
All airlines that offer online check-in, and some that offer manage my booking, display seat maps with seats marked off as available or unavailable (and in some cases as missing due to being reserved for a codeshare partner if booked on the operating airline or vice versa). Sometimes some seats are marked as preferential, which means only passengers who qualify can select those seats. Qualification for preferential seats may depend on airline frequent flyer status, paid club membership, fare paid, or possible a surcharge.
However, even when these type of seat maps are not available at the airline website it may still be possible to access via a CRS website such as checkmytrip.
For information on CRS websites including which one to use for which airlines, please see my previous blog post on airline CRS.
Where you can online check-in or request seats before check-in opens, simply have the other seat map (eg SeatGuru or SeatExpert) open in another window. With many airlines you can also call to select a seat (but not all airlines do this eg Qantas domestic). Failing that, you could take a note of good seats and ones to avoid and ask which seats are available at check in.
Seat availability fallacy
It is commonly thought that a seat availability map showing lots of unallocated seats indicates an empty flight or low load. This is not generally correct. Some airlines do not allow passengers to pre-select seats. Or they may allow pre-selection only for half of passengers in order to maintain flexibility in seating families and groups together. Even when airlines do allow seat pre-allocation, many passengers simply do not bother.
The converse is also a fallacy – that a seat availability map implies a full flight. It might, but is not necessarily so. Airlines may block off sections of seating for a potential group sale, or if they think another flight may be cancelled. They may also block seats for their codeshare partners to allocate (eg on LAN flights between Santiago and Auckland/Sydney some seats are specifically for LAN passengers and some for Qantas passengers).
More tips
I’ll cover some other tools which provide a better indicator of whether a flight may be full or empty (and why this matters) in another post.
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
I’ve had some requests to explain some of the most important things I’ve learnt from FlyerTalk. These are tips, tricks, tools and information that I use almost daily to travel better, in more comfort, more often, and at lower cost. There is no big secret (all information is freely available if you know where to look), but it is hard to find summaries and explanations of why these are so useful.
It is far too much to cover in a single blog post, or even a couple of blog posts. So, I’m currently working on a series of posts. They’ll cover such things as basic airline revenue management (and why it is good for flyers to know about it), tools to check availability, how to find good seats, etc.
If you have any specific topic that you’d like me to cover please drop me a line (using the email link top right or by comment).
Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
